Applicant alleges Qualcomm’s DEI hiring policies drove 14 rejections

Fourteen applications. Zero offers.

According to the complaint, the applicant applied for 14 separate positions at Qualcomm between approximately March 2024 and October 2026. The roles spanned cybersecurity engineering, product management, IT governance, data governance, classified programs, and business development. Two progressed to “Applied” status. The other twelve came back as “No offer.” The complaint alleges Qualcomm provided “no substantive explanation for its rejections.”

The filing puts Qualcomm’s DEI program squarely in the frame. According to the complaint, Qualcomm had “for over a decade, maintained and publicly promoted a diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) policy and corresponding corporate programs that shaped and directed the company’s hiring decisions and practices.” The filing alleges Qualcomm baked DEI considerations into “its talent acquisition strategy, its stated goals for workforce composition, and its human resources practices, including the hiring processes for the positions at issue.”

What that meant in practice, the complaint alleges, was a preference for candidates who “were not white, not male, or both.”

The CHRO’s alleged role is central to the filing. According to the complaint, the executive “bore ultimate institutional responsibility for the human resources and talent acquisition policies and practices that governed each of Plaintiff’s application processes.” The filing alleges she “directed, supervised, and ratified the discriminatory hiring criteria and DEI-driven selection policies” applied to the applicant’s applications, and “personally approved, directed, or ratified the decisions” to deny them.